


Doctor Who and the Pub of Almost Certain Doom

by Doyle



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Doyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having parted company with the Master, the Doctor's keen to reconnect with an old friend. But who could the village pub's mysterious new landlord possibly be, and what does he want...?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Who and the Pub of Almost Certain Doom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rallamajoop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/gifts).



The Doctor’s reputation often preceded her. She’d found that more so in this life than any of the others – although three of those, of course, had been so short that she was surprised the Time Lords hadn’t been in touch about putting her in the Gallifrey Book of Records. She’d arrive on a planet with all intentions of seeing the sights, exploring the museums and checking out the beaches, only to find that there were already ten corrupt leaders with a bounty on her head and four cults in her honour.

She had many names, in this body. The Terserans, to her delight, had created a special smell-word just for her, impossible to render into mere spoken language but containing overtones of courage, adventure and bouncy hair. A whole galactic cluster knew her as _the cheerful trouble_. And her personal favourite, the Hwyan-g!e people of Ryglon VII with their complex, nuanced language, who had dubbed her _Bright-eyed ladyknight of spacetime, she who travels with the sinister companion of the terrible beard._

The Master hadn’t liked Ryglon VII at all. After their last volatile conversation, after she had said “Fine!” and he had said “ _Fine!”_ and they had left the nebula in separate TARDISes, she had gone back to visit the Hwyang!e alone, to prove to herself that she’d enjoy it even more without a background soundtrack of muttered justifications about it being an extremely fashionable beard. Somehow, for the very first time ever, she’d found it lacking, and had cut her stay short.

Still, people did tend to know who she was. These things came with age, she supposed. One could save a planet two or three times and melt away unnoticed into the time vortex and onto the next adventure, but by the twentieth sentient computer with malevolent intentions, the thirtieth eldritch being from the dawn of time, the hundred-and-ninth base under siege... people did begin to have certain expectations.

So she wasn’t too surprised when Emma’s butler, on opening the door, beamed in apparent recognition.

“Doctor! Look, darling, the Doctor’s here!”

“I think it’s rather sweet that he calls you darling,” the Doctor said, craning her neck for another look at the amiable young man as Emma all but rocketed out of the front door and slammed it behind her. “I’d like one of those myself; would he come and buttle for me on the TARDIS, do you think?”

Emma folded her arms across her chest, possibly in a belated attempt to hide the disturbingly jolly snowman on her jumper. “He isn’t my _butler_. Tom’s my husband, Doctor, as you very well know. What are you doing here?”

She hadn’t known that about Tom, in fact, but she was confident in Emma’s excellent taste in husbands so decided it was nothing to worry about. The little puffs of white cloud her friend’s breath was casting into the air, on the other hand, concerned her.

“It’s cold; shouldn’t we go and have a chat inside the house?”

“This is better,” Emma said, between chattering teeth. She refused the offer of the Doctor’s black wool coat, too.

“Are you sure? It’s lovely and swooshy, look. “ She twirled in place to show off the swooshiness, and for the first time since she’d pushed Tom aside at the doorway, Emma’s expression cracked into the reluctant beginnings of a smile.

“I really can’t stay,” she said.

That had been easier than expected. “Oh, well, if you’re ready to go the TARDIS is in your neighbour’s back garden,” the Doctor said. “I thought we could take a spin to Huradon. It’s a lovely planet. Almost all of its recorded history is an eternal war between the death-scorpions and the mantis-men, but I’m fairly confident of hitting that fortnight in the Hur-Ran dynasty when both sides hibern... oh. You meant you couldn’t really stay out here in the garden, didn’t you.”

Emma nodded. “As lovely an offer as that is, I’m sure the Master wouldn’t be thrilled to have me along for the trip. Where is he, anyway? Skulking around Mrs Leeson’s azalea bushes? Trying to miniaturise her cat?”

The Doctor pulled a face that various other human friends had assured her meant “it’s complicated”. “The Master and I... agreed to part company,” she said.

“Oh, no,” Emma said, after a slightly-too-long pause and without much sincerity. Still, the Doctor appreciated the effort. “Poor you. Where did it all go wrong?”

“You know how it is. A relationship’s wonderful at first, but the little disagreements never go away. You want to save planets, he wants to rule them; you want to explore all of time and space for the sheer fun of the thing, he wants to scour the cosmos for ethically dubious ways to live forever. And neither of us are really the agree to disagree type, so...” She shrugged. “Here we are! And here I am. And here you are, shivering, you poor thing. You could do with a holiday somewhere warm, and Huradon’s just the place – all the sand, sea and hibernating scorpionfolk anyone could ask for, if I time it right.”

“Doctor, I can’t. I’m sorry about you and the Master – sort of – but there’s Tom, and...”

“Oh, Tom won’t notice if you pop off with me for a month or two. I’m sure he has plenty of things to occupy himself with. That baby he was holding, for one.”

“That baby,” Emma said, “is also my baby. And her name is Phoebe, and she’s not going within a million miles of the planet of the death-scorpions, and I’m not going anywhere without her, so that’s that.” She pulled her sleeves down over her wrists and huddled deeper into her jumper; regretting turning down the swooshy coat now, the Doctor thought. “I mean, it’s just out of the question. A month or two? I don’t think I’ve had an hour or two out of the house by myself since she was born. You’d think that would be a big adjustment after those years running around with you, six new planets every day by breakfast and saving the world twice before tea, but I hardly ever even think about getting a little scrap of time to myself. Why are you wearing a stewardess’s hat, by the way?”

“It went so beautifully with the coat. Do you like it? I’ve been visiting some old friends.”

Emma’s eyes were kind. “And did all of them say they wouldn’t come with you?”

“Well, people have families and worthy causes and galactic empires that won’t run themselves...

everybody seems to have a Phoebe of one sort or another,” she said brightly. “Never mind! Lovely to see you. Do give my best to Tom. Tell him the butler position’s still open.”

“Wait.” Emma held up a finger. “Don’t fly away. Just wait one minute. I need to speak to Tom.”

He either didn’t fancy a change of career or she forgot to mention it, because she came back out of the house five minutes later alone – but she’d put on lipstick and earrings, and she was pulling a coat over a snowman-free blouse. “I told Tom you’d had a row with your boyfriend and you needed a good chat with an old friend,” she said. “None of that’s a lie, is it? No? Good. So he’s looking after Phoebe for an hour. A whole hour,” she seemed to feel the need to repeat.

“Good old Tom,” the Doctor said. “I knew I liked him. We’ll have our little Huradonian holiday, I’ll drop you back here fifty-nine minutes from now, and nobody will be any the wiser.”

“Once again, I’m not going anywhere in the TARDIS.”

“Ah.”

“But I will go five minutes to the end of the road and around the corner and into the pub, where I will buy you the most alcoholic thing on the menu, make the barman put at least seven umbrellas in it, and listen to you complain about your terrible ex.”

“Exactly what I was going to suggest.”

**

Emma had been a marvellous travelling companion, not to mention a fine fiancée, and she’d been ever such a good sport about the thing with the Master – but the Doctor couldn’t help but think that she’d never approached a new planet or exciting historical era with the enthusiasm she was showing for a small village pub apparently called the _Lucky Badger_.

“We need to make time for ourselves as people, that’s the problem,” Emma was saying. “Really, I’m showing Tom that I trust him, and I think I should make that very clear by staying out for the full hour. Maybe even a little bit long... Doctor?”

The Doctor shook herself. “Brr. What’s that human saying? Someone walked on my skeleton?”

“Walked over my grave. That’s what you look like.”

“Time Lords say ‘I feel like someone wiggled their fingers in my timestream without washing their hands first’.”

“Eurgh.”

“No, not very catchy, is it?” She rubbed at her arms, feeling goosepimples there even through her coat. “That’s exactly how it feels, though. Like someone’s poking around in my past. Strange. I think we ought to go inside, don’t you?”

Emma hesitated at the pub door. “Promise me,” she said, “that behind this door there’s a perfectly normal village pub. Not any Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons, Huradonians - hibernating or otherwise – Monoids, Quarks or that thing that looked like a mutant pantomime horse.”

The Doctor considered this. “I promise,” she said carefully, “that to the best of my knowledge none of those things are behind this door.” She patted her pocket anyway, checking that the sonic screwdriver was still there. “Shall we?”

The inside of the _Badger_ all looked quite normal, as far as her experience of late twentieth-century rural English pubs extended. There was flock wallpaper, and a carpet that had seen better decades, and boxes of crisps behind the horseshoe-shaped bar. Two old men were playing dominoes at a corner table, and a gaggle of young women in pink sashes proclaiming them to be _Cindy’s Gorgeous Hens!!!_ were loudly lining up neon-coloured shot glasses at one end of the bar.

“Very good,” she said. “Very good indeed. Nine out of ten for a normal pub ambience.”

Emma sighed, with more feeling than the Doctor had ever heard before. “I don’t suppose we can get a drink first and then deal with the other one out of ten?”

“You’ve spotted it too, of course?”

“It did cross my mind that most buildings with doors on the outside also have them on the inside, yes.” The blank wall behind them had a dartboard on it, dotted all around with thousands of pinpricks that could only build up after years of drunken competition. It had evidently been there for a very long time. It hadn’t been there sixty seconds before.

The Doctor tapped the arm of the nearest hen. “Hello – Sunita, is it? How very clever, wearing t-shirts with your names so none of you forget, and what an interesting tiara, how would you like to swap it for a flight attendant’s hat? No? Do let me know if you change your mind. Sunita, do you see anything wrong about this pub?”

Sunita, she decided, was a kind and wise young woman and a credit to bridal parties everywhere, although some of her bonhomie and general willingness to help might have been alcohol related. Either way, she obligingly looked very carefully around the room before she said, “I think the new owner’s moved the quiz machine. My best friend’s getting married!” This got a “woo!” from the rest of her group, before they went back to their drinks.

Emma said, “Most hen do’s head to one of the clubs in town.”

“So are we. You should both come!”

“My friend and I would like that very much,” the Doctor said, nudging Emma before she could reflexively bring up her one-hour time limit. “When will you be leaving?”

Sunita’s bright smile stayed in place, but a puzzled look crept into her eyes. “It’s weird,” she said. “I don’t think we meant to stay anything like this long.” She turned to look behind them, straight at the wall where the door should be, and then she blinked, as if shaking off a daydream. “Come and have a drink with us!”

“We will, we certainly will. It’s a perception filter,” the Doctor told Emma, when their new friend had been absorbed back into her flock. “Affecting every human in here, present company excepted. They have no desire to leave, which is lucky, given the door’s disappearance.”

“Well, I desire to leave. Very much so, right now.” But companions, even former companions, could be relied upon. They might be frightened, they might be in the middle of a crisis, but they still asked the right questions. Sure enough, Emma said, “Why trap a load of humans in a pub, anyway?”

“I’m not convinced the humans were the point,” the Doctor said. “‘Trap’, on the other hand, is an excellent word for this situation.”

“This is a trap for you? But why? And who?”

“I’m not sure of the ‘why’ yet,” she said. “As for ‘who’, well... there have been a few subtle hints. That uneasy feeling a moment ago, like someone was rifling about in my personal timeline. Sunita said the pub had a new owner – I suspect the old owner suddenly vanished without a trace and the new one’s called, let’s see, something like Mr Stea. And I’d guess that’s him, in fact, the man behind the bar who’s had his back turned to us for the past five minutes even though he’s letting the barmaid do all the actual work.”

The man behind the bar spun on his heel to face them, a dramatic move diminished by the fact that she’d expected it, and a peevish look on his face that said he was well aware of this but was making the best of it. The pistol in his hand might have been one of his miniaturising rays, or a vaporiser; or, for all she knew, a miniature cigar lighter. It wasn’t a chance she could take with the lives of the humans.

“So, Doctor!”

If her hearts suddenly beat a little faster, she told herself, it was nothing but the natural adrenaline rush of finding oneself in a trap set by one’s oldest, deadliest foe. Particularly a foe who had until very recently been one’s – not that they had ever put this in so many words - romantic partner.

“Master!”

Emma groaned. Eyes locked on each other, neither of them paid her any attention.

“We meet again.”

“I always assumed we would. I have some of your things in a cardboard box in my TARDIS, if you’d like to pick them up when we’ve finished here.”

She might have only imagined a flash of hurt in the Master’s eyes before he drew himself up. “There are more important things at stake here, Doctor. Surely you must be wondering why, after all these long, difficult months of separation, I’ve travelled to this place, to this time, to ensnare you in my fiendishly clever trap?”

“Taking the door away isn’t _very_ fiendish,” Emma muttered, and the Master finally deigned to glance at her.

“And dear Miss... erm.”

“Typical.”

“And dear Emma,” he said instead. “Although it’s Mrs, now, I believe?”

“You _know_ that...”

“Never mind, never mind,” the Doctor said, stepping between them. “You’re quite right, Master, fiendishly clever’s the only word for it. Why don’t you let Emma and all the other humans go?”

“The other humans are my hostages,” he said. “And young... Emma... has her own part to play, as you will see. But first – your sonic screwdriver, please.”

She handed it over with reluctance. Even when they’d been – well, friendly – she hadn’t liked him fiddling with it. He lacked the finesse that came with centuries of practice, and it always took ages to get the settings back the way she liked them.

“Step this way, Doctor, and behold!”

Keeping Emma close at her side, the Doctor moved as he indicated, around the curve of the bar to where the pub opened out to a small dancefloor. Some of the pink-sashed women were up and dancing, but she guessed that what the Master wanted them to see was the group of four men huddled around a table. To the untrained observer they would appear to be men, anyway, of various shapes and ages, although three of them were wearing identical clothes, giving them something of the appearance of a dishevelled barbershop quartet; taken clockwise around the table they looked, variously, bemused, alarmed, irritated, and deeply sarcastic.

“What a very small universe it is,” the Doctor said. “Hello, me, me, me, and, last but by no means least, me; what in the world are we all doing here?”

***

Gloating was one of the Master’s most unattractive traits, the Doctor told herself. Firmly. The smirking confidence, and the way he lit up with excitement at explaining how clever he’d been – eugh. No, thank you. This was a serious and dangerous situation and she was in no way enjoying this return to their nemesisness.

Emma was giving her a hard look, which she pretended not to notice.

“...merely needed a time scoop,” the Master was boasting. He kept sneaking glances at her to make sure she was impressed. “And I acquired one from Gallifrey. From under the very noses of the Time Lord High Council.”

“Not, as it happens, a very difficult feat,” put in her youngest self, the one with the black hair and sarcastic expression.

“Hello, Doctor,” Emma said quietly, and he looked up at her in surprise.

“He hasn’t met you yet,” the Doctor told her. Her past self was very young. Still attached to the velvet and lace of the previous regeneration, which meant he’d been scooped from their timestream at some point before he’d met Emma, and before he’d subsequently lost half the wardrobe room to her ‘accidentally’ leaning on the console’s ejector switch.

“Hello,” he said. “Anyway, placing a small classified ad in the Daily Shobogan offering time scoop repairs and vacuuming service at knock-down prices is hardly the stuff of song and story.”

“I told you that in confidence,” the Master snapped. “Regardless, having stolen a time scoop from the very heart of Gallifrey itself by means most underhand and cunning, thank you very much, my trap could be set.”

“I’d barely regenerated when he got me,” one of her other selves said – and goodness, the Doctor thought, hadn’t she been _dishy_ there for a little while. “Rotten trick, I call it; surrounded by Daleks and I’d barely had a chance to count how many arms and legs I’d got before there was a sinister triangle wobbling through the air towards me.”

“Same with me, the bastard!”

“And me,” the final Doctor mumbled, adding defiantly, “you... you what-he-said.”

The Master’s smirk only deepened. “Naturally, my first thought was to bring all of you to the Death Zone, to pit you against the deadliest foes from your past – Daleks. Cybermen. Perhaps that peculiar beast that looked like two people dressed as a horse.”

Emma let out a gasp. The one who the Doctor couldn’t help but think of as Emma’s Doctor said, “Don’t panic, my dear. We won’t be going to the Death Zone. He lifted me from my timestream first, and we got as far as the Service Tunnels of Rassilon before he realised the place was closed for renovations.”

“Ooh, are they finally doing the old place up?” she said. “They’ve been talking about that since we were in the Academy.”

“When we used to get old Professor Gulbanis talking about his plans for the Death Zone so he wouldn’t remember to set any Temporal Studies prep,” the Master said, his face softening just for an instant. “They’ve started putting up that gift shop he wanted.”

Emma’s Doctor cleared his throat. “Loathe as I am to put a speedbump in the path of this charming jaunt down memory lane, I think you were explaining your evil scheme.”

“Oh... yes! Yes.” The Master raised the pistol again, waving it between Doctors as he said, “With the Death Zone out of bounds I chose to set my trap in this place. This... _Little Pocklington_.”

“There’s no need to say it like that,” Emma said. “It’s quite nice. The schools are very good. The pub isn’t... well, _wasn’t_ bad.”

“Yes, I’m not convinced about this new management,” the Doctor said.

“Mr East!” The barmaid was leaning over the bar. “Barrel needs changing. Told you quarter of an hour ago.”

Mr East – that must have taken hours of thought – shooed her irritably away with the gun. Under the perception filter’s influence she wouldn’t even see it, the Doctor knew, any more than she would see her workplace’s peculiar lack of door. As far as she knew, her employer was merely a local publican. “Yes, yes, I’m seeing to it.”

“Doesn’t look like you’re seeing to it. Looks like you’re standing round chatting to your pals.”

“They are not my ‘pals’, Miss Foster, will you just... fine. Fine.” To the Doctors, he said, “Any attempts to escape, Doctor...” He swung the pistol in a vague figure of eight meant to imply serious consequences for any unlucky human hostages.

They watched him go into the trapdoor behind the bar, and when he’d vanished into the cellar the Doctor turned to the table full of selves and said, “Right. What’s his plan?”

The tall one, her Tenth incarnation, had been fidgeting in his chair since the Master had brought them over. Now he shot to his feet. “No idea. Mostly he’s just been talking you up. ‘Temporary truce while we travelled together’, eh?” He grinned. “He hasn’t come out and said you dumped him because he couldn’t keep up with you, but I think it’s been implied. Good for you, Thirteen. Now, there’s five of us – six if you count Emma, hel _lo_ Emma who I would personally _always_ count – and one of him, plus that brainwashed barmaid. The two old geezers and the hen party girls could go either way, but I think we should take the chance and rush him. Who’s with me?”

No-one was, and he dropped into his seat again. “Sod the lot of you, then,” he said amiably.

“We’re not rushing him,” the Doctor said. “Somebody could be hurt. And we need to find out what he wants. He really hasn’t said anything else?”

Emma’s Doctor shook his head. “We’ve been here for hours and other than a few non-specific bouts of gloating he’s left us alone. We’ve mostly been concerned with Ten agitating to have a go on the quiz machine and Cindy and various Gorgeous Hens making any excuse to come over and chat up the pretty one.”

“Resent the implication I’m not the pretty one; willing to overlook it if you give me a quid for that quiz machine. Anyone? Eighty/twenty split of the winnings? I have a feeling I’m going to be especially excellent at trivia.”

The Master heaved himself out of the cellar, and stood for a moment frowning at the dust on his black gloves. “The quiz device is out of order,” he said. “I believe there’s something called a karaoke machine in the corner if you really must.”

“I must.” Ten bolted from the table, over the protesting groans of his other four selves. The Master, preoccupied with dusting off his hands, let him go.

“Where was I...? Ah yes, explaining that I brought my trap to the home of your dear companion, Miss – Mrs – you could at least properly introduce your humans, Doctor.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Emma’s Doctor said, with interest, “do introduce us.”

For some reason, this pleased the Master. “A splendid idea,” he said, fixing the pistol on Emma’s Doctor and motioning for him to stand. “This establishment has a living area behind the bar. You and this charming young lady can become acquainted there.”

“Now, hang on,” the Doctor protested, but Emma gave her arm a reassuring squeeze.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’d like to speak to him. I won’t tell him anything about the future.”

“Perhaps you’d like to take the other Doctor’s arm instead,” the Master said, and Emma looked at him oddly but did as he suggested. Her Doctor patted her hand, and the Master hurried both of them away and out of sight.

The Doctor dropped into Ten’s vacated chair. Up until this moment, she’d almost been enjoying herself.

“Come and dance with us!” A young lady with ‘Tricia’ on her pink t-shirt wiggled her fingers at the pretty one, smiling at him as if he was sitting at the table all by himself. An entirely different kind of perception filter, the Doctor thought.

“Oh, I mustn’t, I really shouldn’t...” Twelve was already out of his seat. But before Tricia dragged him away he looked at the Doctor and said, “Look, for what it’s worth, the Master hasn’t hurt anyone yet, and the way he speaks about you... I think, for whatever reason, he really does just want them to talk. Brave heart, as we used to say.”

Then there were two.

The shy one looked up at the ceiling, and down at the house of beermats he’d been quietly building the entire time, and everywhere except directly in her face, until eventually he said, “I think... I think I know what he wants. The Master, I mean.”

The Doctor leaned in, then, when this only seemed to alarm him, leaned back out. “Tell me.”

“I might be wrong. I’m probably wrong. But – well, he took all of us just after we’d regenerated, didn’t he? I don’t imagine that was an accident.” He looked sympathetically over to where the Tenth Doctor was hauling microphones from a crate. “Of course, the one before me regenerated again almost straight away, so it’s not as the Master could have taken him from later in his timestream even if he’d wanted to. Poor thing, he has no idea. It’s nice to see him enjoying himself, even if he is a bit... tiring.”

It _was_ nice, and it would be awful if he happened to notice that Twelve was still wearing the same clothes and deduce what that meant for his own lifespan, but she didn’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for herself. Any of her selves. “It could just be a coincidence,” she said, but Eleven was getting surer of himself, actually looking her in the eye now.

“And why try to get to the Death Zone through the service tunnels? They’re miles from the zone itself and they’re always locked down. I don’t think he planned to make us play the Game at all. I think he had some other plan on Gallifrey.” He tapped his finger on the table for emphasis, and some of the new-found confidence vanished from his face when he sent the beermat pyramid toppling. “Or the two things might be completely unrelated.”

“I think,” the Doctor said, “that you’re onto something. Look around. Do you see anything unusual? Other than Tricia trying to sit on Twelve’s lap.”

“Oh, dear!” Red-faced, he looked around the pub in every direction except for where his future self was entertaining the hen party. “There’s the missing door, of course, but everything else – oh. What’s that on top of the quiz machine?”

She was already halfway across the room to it. “It looks very much like a biogenic field container. Gosh, I’ve only seen this style in museums. It can’t be Rassilon’s original, can it? It _is_ , look at the signature on the bottom!”

“Oi!” Miss Foster had been ignoring them both, but now she came out from behind the bar. “That’s out of order.”

“It looks in perfect working condition to me.” The Doctor pointed to the screen. “Look, all the usual categories. ‘90s Trivia’, ‘Pop Music’, ‘Siphon Regeneration Energy’, ‘Sport’...”

“All I know is nobody’s to touch it, and if you don’t like it you can take it up with Mr East.”

Miss Foster kept a beady eye on them until they were back at the table. Eleven was crimson under the scrutiny.

“He’s going to steal our regeneration energy,” he said.

She squelched down any part of herself that was shocked or disappointed or, of all things, _betrayed_ , and said, “He’s going to _try_.”

***

She was perched on a bar stool when the Master returned, nursing a drink which, as per her request, was alcoholic enough to knock out a Huradonian mantis-warrior in the height of the mating frenzy, with enough tiny umbrellas that it was like looking down on a perfect miniature beach party.

“Doctor,” he said, in that way that she’d often suspected was less about announcing himself than the sheer pleasure of saying her name.

She didn’t say ‘Master’ in return. “Nobody’s tried to escape,” she said instead. “The other three are trying to get the karaoke machine working. I can’t guarantee Ten won’t try to sing you into surrendering. What about the other one? And Emma?”

“Don’t worry about them, Doctor. It’s going very well. Very well indeed.” He took a seat at her side, trying to climb onto the high stool with dignity and not quite managing it. “Miss Foster! You’ll find a bottle of champagne in the fridge. Please deliver it to my guests in the next room.”

Miss Foster did so, complaining loudly all the while to no-one in particular about how this had been a decent pub once, none of this fancy nonsense, and that it was just as well it was his own money he was wasting.

“So, my dear,” he said, if they were still on the same side and this was just something they’d laugh about later over a nice dinner on a picturesque planet. “How have you been?”

“Oh, you know. Keeping busy. Visiting some old friends. Which I suppose is what you’ve been doing, in a way.”

“I’m afraid, my dear Doctor, that your young ‘friend’,” she didn’t care for that insinuation in his tone, “is, as we speak, eating chocolates and drinking champagne with the man she once planned to marry. Old feelings rushing to the surface, old entanglements reborn in her hearts...”

“They only have one, actually. Don’t ask me how they manage, but they do.”

“Even better! A single heart, consumed with desire and regrets for lost love.”

“Tell me,” she said, “since we split up have you, by any chance, been reading large numbers of romance novels?”

“I have not,” he snapped, and she was suddenly sure that if she were to inspect his TARDIS she’d find stacks of the cheap paperbacks she’d used to smuggle into the Academy to sell to appalled and fascinated dorm-mates. “But believe me, Doctor, when Emma walks out of that room her heart will belong completely in the past.”

“Oh dear.”

“Oh dear indeed, Doctor. Oh dear indeed.”

“This is awful. I feel so responsible. She’ll have to come and live with me on the TARDIS again.”

“What?”

“Goodness knows how we’ll manage with the baby.”

“What baby?”

“I suppose there are those sling things. And the zero room might be quite nice as a nursery.”

“Doctor!” The Master threw up his hands. “Stop planning your future with this woman! She won’t be able to look at you in a romantic light ever again!”

“She doesn’t look at me in a romantic light now,” she said, baffled. “And anyway, you’re talking about splitting her up from Tom, aren’t you?”

The Master stared at her. Her past self’s voice suddenly cut in, amplified by a microphone – “...esting, one, two, three – it’s working, nice work, Pretty Boy! Hello, Little Pocklington!”

“Who,” the Master said slowly, “is Tom?”

“Emma’s husband. I met him tonight. Very nice. Opens doors, holds babies, he’s really the whole package.”

“Then she isn’t...” He seemed to be searching for the words. “She isn’t married to you?”

“She isn’t married to me. I am not currently married to her, or to anyone.” She swirled her drink. The tiny umbrellas jostled one another. “I haven’t even been seeing anyone since you and I parted company, if you must know.”

“ _Don't go breaking my heart_ – come on, Eleven, you impossible bore, I can’t do a duet by myself! _Honey, if I get restless_ – what do you mean, you don’t know it? If I know it obviously you know it, I’m earlier than you _...breaking my heart_ – now you’re making me miss _my_ bits – ladies, my very good friend is extremely shy, I think a big rousing cheer would get him onstage – are you _hiding_?”  


“I may have misread the situation,” the Master said at last.

“Oh, may you?” She sighed. “I doubt it matters. Emma might be upset but she’ll bounce back. She loves Tom. She got over me – him – a long time ago.”

“How would anyone get over you?”

There was no answering that; it was quiet enough that she wasn’t sure she was meant to have heard it. Instead she lifted her cocktail, flicked the umbrellas out of the glass, one by one, and downed the drink. It made her eyes water.

Behind them, Eleven had been coaxed onto the tiny stage and was stumbling his way through the opening lines to _Son of a Preacher Man._

The Doctor nodded towards him. “He’s actually a lot more capable than I gave him any credit for.”

“Well, the words come up on the little screen.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

In the corner, the domino players had finished a game and were starting a new one. She would have liked to have remarked on that, two very old men playing a game that one of them won, only to begin all over again, but it wasn’t easy to have that sort of conversation over a poor rendition of Dusty Springfield.

“You’re going to steal their regeneration energy, aren’t you?”

The Master looked sidelong at her; taken aback, maybe, by the calmness in her voice. “Not Emma’s Doctor,” he said. “Only the three who lived a very short time. Don’t think of it as stealing. It’s more a programme of recycling. After all, they’re not using that life-force themselves, are they?”

“You see,” she told him sadly, “this is why we didn’t work, because you don’t understand that that isn’t the point. Why do you care so much about living forever, anyway? I don’t...”

“Why do you care so little for it? Your thirteenth life, your very last life, in danger every time you insist on saving some backwater planet for the twenty-ninth time, and you won’t even consider finding some way to save yourself! Won’t even listen when _I_ find a way! Well, the universe will not lose you, Doctor, while I have anything to say about it.”

She had been about to say: “I don’t think I ever understood you”.

They’d had it half right. It would just never have occurred to her – not in a hundred lifetimes – that he might not want those extra regenerations for himself.

He sighed. “Doctor...” His hand inched towards hers on the bar-top. Then he paused, frowned: “The music’s stopped.”

“Yes.” She pulled back her hand, not without regret. “That’s because of my hat.”

He squinted at her. “You aren’t wearing a hat.”

“No, that’s right.” She reached up to touch the plastic pink tiara she was wearing instead. “Sunita – lovely girl, chief bridesmaid, she arranged her best friend’s whole hen weekend down to the last detail – she decided she wanted to swap her little crown for my hat. Wasn’t that awfully nice of her? Twelve’s suggestion, I think she might be sweet on him.”

The Master’s eyes widened.

“Of course, it did mean the TARDIS thought she was my new companion, and it broke through the perception filter. And when she realised they’d been stuck in this village for hours, mucking up the schedule she’s been planning for Cindy for months... well, while the other Doctors provided some covering music, she shared this information with her friends. Pistol and my sonic screwdriver, please.”

He handed them over without protest, and without otherwise moving a muscle. “They’re behind me, aren’t they?”

Sunita, at the head of the group, unfolded her arms and slowly, deliberately took off her sash.

***

Handily, the new model of time scoops turned out to have a reversal function built in. The Doctor supposed she could have angsted over the fact that three of her selves were technically going back to their deaths, but that was just how the timeline was; anyway, Emma had them covered on that score, saying goodbye to each of them in turn. When she got to the dishy one she held both his hands and looked deeply into his eyes for long enough that her Doctor – the one who’d very soon be her Doctor, anyway – chivvied them apart.

“Until next time,” he told her. “I only hope our next meeting is under better circumstances. I, for one, find it much easier to get to know someone without a bearded gooseberry unsubtly pushing us together.”

The Master, tied very securely to a chair by a dozen pink sashes, scowled. Emma only smiled, and kissed her Doctor on the cheek.

That was enough of that. “Goodbye, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor and Doctor,” the Doctor said, and fired up the time scoop.

In an instant the last triangle had shrunk to nothing and the three of them were left alone in the empty pub.

Jerry-rigging the modified quiz machine to act as a communications device wasn’t difficult. It was getting through a conversation with the High Council that was hard.

“I’m not sure what else I can tell you, Prof... Chancellor Gulbanis,” the Doctor finally said, after some solid minutes of Time Lord histrionics. “The past Doctors have been returned to their own time and the time scoop should be on its way back to Gallifrey by now – without the full shampoo and service the Master promised, I’m afraid, but with the Biogenic Field Container of Rassilon inside, so that’s something. And all the humans have been sent on their way, unhurt. Why don’t we all chalk it up to experience?”

“But you let the Master escape!”

She didn’t look away from the Chancellor’s peevish face, but she could feel the Master’s dark, thoughtful gaze on her. “I’m sure the Master and I will meet again.”

Gulbanis huffed as much as he ever had when handing back her prep, usually substandard, always substantially cribbed from the Master. “Doctor, I’m afraid you don’t understand the seriousness of this situation. The Master did not merely extract your past selves from the timestream; he fundamentally altered your timeline!”

At worst he’d ensured that her past self had fallen for Emma, but since that had happened in the original timeline too it was hardly important. “Don’t concern yourselves. I’m sure you have other things to be going on with – the Death Zone’s looking well, I hear.”

Even his favourite subject wouldn’t sway Gulbanis. “Three of your past incarnations – three! – now have severely shortened lifespans. Mere minutes, Doctor! Should the Master ever show his face on Gallifrey again...”

The Master rolled his eyes, but kept quiet.

“Actually,” the Doctor said, and was about to explain that she’d regenerated four times in almost as many minutes quite on her own and without any Masterly interference when her knees gave way beneath her.

The Master surged forward, heedless of the restraints around his arms and legs, and only ended up toppling onto the floor. It was Emma who caught the Doctor by the elbow.

“Somebody walking over my grave,” the Doctor murmured to her, clutching at the support. “Lots of somebodies. Whole legions of them. Something’s changing my timestream...”

“Let me go to her,” the Master whispered urgently. “Doctor!”

Luckily, Gulbanis was still talking and didn’t hear him. “We’ve removed your past selves from the Master’s influence,” he said. “The timeline should be asserting itself now. Good luck, Doctor. Do visit the Death Zone if you get the chance. Goodbye.”

Later, the Doctor would insist she hadn’t fainted. She never lost consciousness; she never even closed her eyes. But for a moment everything was blank. All she knew was that she was in front of some kind of screened cabinet that wanted her to choose between ‘Hits of the Sixties’ and ‘Cricket Legends’. A young woman was holding her arm. And a man with a beard and a receding hairline and beautifully intense eyes was kneeling on the floor with a chair tied to his back and shouting something at her.

“Doctor! Doctor!”

Oh, that was _her_. And he was...

“Master,” she said, and the memories didn’t crash back or flood back but were simply in her head as if they’d never been missing.

Except there were a lot more of them now.

***

Emma talked a good deal, on the walk back to her house, about her conversation with her Doctor in the pub’s back room, and about her husband and child. She wasn’t despondent at this reminder of lost love and about to leave Tom because of it, to the Doctor’s relief.

“I think it really helped me put things in perspective,” she said. “Everything happened so quickly when he – you – regenerated. And regenerated. And regenerated. I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. And now I have, sort of.” She prodded the Master’s own pistol into his side. “So, thank you, I suppose.”

“You’re most welcome,” he said sourly.

The Doctor, flanking the Master on his other side, had said little since they’d untied him. She was distracted with the delight of poking around her new memories. A domino discarded on the pub floor had suddenly reminded her of Jeremy. Ten minutes ago she’d never known Jeremy, and now she remembered years of shy, unspoken adoration over mugs of Bovril and games of dominoes, when she’d been happier puttering around garden centres than running down corridors. She’d needed the rest, after a life she’d rocketed through as fast and as loudly as she could.

And the Gorgeous Hens! Cutting the Master free she’d looked for names on the sashes, because she’d met Sunita and Tricia but now she knew all of them, Trisha and Alicia and Tracey and the rest, every one of them magnificent, a dozen of the finest travelling companions she’d ever had.

“Fifty-nine minutes exactly,” Emma said, stopping outside her front gate. The porch light was on, and a television screen flickered behind the living room blinds. It all looked very cosy, the Doctor thought, and was glad for her. “I could stay another few minutes and help you get to the TARDIS, if the Master’s going to cause any more mischief.”

He tsked, loudly. The Doctor took the pistol out of Emma’s hand and, on impulse, ran the sonic screwdriver over it. “It’s just a cigar lighter,” she said, and tucked it into her pocket. “I don’t think he’s going to be any trouble. Nothing I can’t handle, at least.”

Emma said, “So are you two... is it all...” Neither of them said anything, although they looked carefully at one another for a reaction, and she let the sentence trail off. “It’s none of my business,” she said. “I mean, obviously you care about each other, and if you were going to split up it’s a shame you couldn’t have done it _before_ you caused chaos at my wedding because it’s a miracle my in-laws even speak to me. But it’s your relationship, and I’m going inside to my lovely husband and lovely baby. Doctor, it was... nice to see you. Mostly. Ring first the next time, and we’ll go for that drink.” She leaned up to peck the Doctor’s cheek.

The Master’s “eugh”, quiet as it was, was obviously meant to be heard. Lesser Time Lords would have withered at the look Emma gave him in response.

Tom opened the door, baby on his hip, and waved to them both.

“He is the whole package,” the Master admitted.

The door closed and they turned to face each other. There were a lot of inconvenient questions that needed to be asked now, the Doctor thought, about what everything meant for them and what they were going to do now and whether there was a chance, and they’d never been good at that.

“I must ask,” the Master said, and she braced herself, but he said, “did you understand what she meant about her wedding?”

“No! That was a mystery to me, too. I didn’t go to her wedding. Did you? No, you couldn’t have, you thought she’d married me.”

“Then,” he said carefully, “it’s still in our future.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“At some point we go to your former fiancée’s wedding, together.”

“And cause chaos, apparently. To be fair, that does sound very us.”

His hand found hers. “Doctor, I’m afraid that in telling us our future your young friend has made her wedding a fixed point.”

“Well, obviously.” She laced her fingers with his. “You’ve barely escaped the wrath of the High Council once today. We can hardly afford to ignore a fixed point. We’re going to have to go to this wedding.”

“But not, I think, directly.”

“Oh, no,” she agreed hurriedly. “I’ve just seen Emma. No need to rush to the wedding. And we’ll need...” She searched her memories of years travelling with the hens. “Hats? And novelty items shaped like human genitals, for some reason. Ooh, and a wedding present.”

“We shall find the finest wedding present this miserable planet has ever seen,” he vowed, and raised her hand to his lips.

“Let’s start off with the jewel-sacs of Huradon,” she said. “And then the Ryglon VII present peninsula, and see where that takes us. If everything else fails, we’ll always have the Death Zone gift shop.”


End file.
